As if their 2025-26 season couldn't get any weirder, the Milwaukee Bucks are once again being linked to one of the biggest sports betting scandals in the history of the league. This comes just a week after franchise superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo was traded at the culmination of one of, if not the single most convoluted, dramatic, unnecessarily harsh seasons in team history.
A federal indictment named former Bucks wing Malik Beasley, accusing him of illicitly gambling on his own games with Milwaukee during the 2024 season as part of a larger betting conspiracy that he allegedly used to help clear his own debts. Ironically enough, Beasley was a strong contributor for Milwaukee that season, averaging 11 points and four rebounds as a starter, shooting 41% on seven 3-point attempts per game.
The indictment accuses him of both underperforming and overperforming based on his betting lines in certain scenarios. They range from personal statistics like rebounds or 3-point attempts to the outcomes of games, like an over/under or spreads on the final score.
That season would've been the turning point for Beasley's career had he stayed on the straight and narrow. He used his Bucks season as a springboard to become a league-leading shooter with the Detroit Pistons — a team that ascended to a No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference after parting ways with him over the accusations. Now, it's more likely that he receives a lifetime ban from the league.
This is just the icing on the cake of the weirdest season in Bucks history.
Malik Beasley's sports gambling indictment is just another cliffnote in the strangest season in modern Milwaukee Bucks history.
From locker room leaks to public feuds, NBPA investigations and coaching decisions, hail mary deadline deals and everything in between, there hasn't been a Bucks season with this much noise around it since they were NBA champions. Unfortunately, this is not for a good reason.
Almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong. As the NBA league calendar flips over on July 1st, it's a chance for the Bucks and their fans to wipe the slate clean and look ahead to a brighter future together, as they wash off the stink of the Giannis trade saga and everything that led to it.
Videos are already trickling out across social media of moments when Beasley was accused of wrongdoing, or others when fans suspect he might've been up to no good. It's just another round of negative news that Milwaukee has become unfairly accustomed to in the last several years.
At this point, all we can do is look at those videos and laugh it off, as the franchise moves toward an era where youth dominates and culture goes above all else. Because if the culture is right, it makes star players more likely to stay, and role players less likely to illegally gamble on the outcomes of their own games... or at least I'd like to hope so!
NBA free agency begins in less than 24 hours. Let's see what Jon Horst has in store for a fanbase that he likely knows deserves a few wins this summer.
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